thos.

Kleczynski has this in his second volume, for he enjoyed the invaluable
prompting of Chopin's pupil, the late Princess Marceline Czartoryska.

Niecks quotes Mme. Friederike Stretcher, nee Muller, a pupil, who wrote
of her master: "He required adherence to the strictest rhythm, hated
all lingering and lagging, misplaced rubatos, as well as exaggerated
ritardandos. 'Je vous prie de vous asseoir,' he said, on such an
occasion, with gentle mockery. And it is just in this respect that
people make such terrible mistakes in the execution of his works."

And now to the Mazurkas, which de Lenz said were Heinrich Heine's songs
on the piano. "Chopin was a phoenix of intimacy with the piano. In his
nocturnes and mazurkas he is unrivalled, downright fabulous."

No compositions are so Chopin-ish as the Mazurkas. Ironical, sad,
sweet, joyous, morbid, sour, sane and dreamy, they illustrate what was
said of their composer--"his heart is sad, his mind is gay." That
subtle quality, for an Occidental, enigmatic, which the Poles call Zal,
is in some of them; in others the fun is almost rough and roaring. Zal,
a poisonous word, is a baleful compound of pain, sadness, secret
rancor, revolt. It is a Polish quality and is in the Celtic peoples.
Oppressed nations with a tendency to mad lyrism develop this mental
secretion of the spleen. Liszt writes that "the Zal colors with a
reflection now argent, now ardent the whole of Chopin's works." This
sorrow is the very soil of Chopin's nature. He so confessed when
questioned by Comtesse d'Agoult. Liszt further explains that the
strange word includes in its meanings--for it seems packed with
them--"all the tenderness, all the humility of a regret borne with
resignation and without a murmur;" it also signifies "excitement,
agitation, rancor, revolt full of reproach, premeditated vengeance,
menace never ceasing to threaten if retaliation should ever become
possible, feeding itself meanwhile with a bitter if sterile hatred."

Sterile indeed must be such a consuming passion. Even where his
patriotism became a lyric cry, this Zal tainted the source of Chopin's
joy. It made him irascible, and with his powers of repression, this
smouldering, smothered rage must have well nigh suffocated him, and in
the end proved harmful alike to his person and to his art. As in
certain phases of disease it heightened the beauty of his later work,
unhealthy, feverish, yet beauty without doubt. The pearl is said to